


Smoke Gets In Your Eyes Sometimes

by atlanticslide



Category: Backdraft (1991)
Genre: First Time, Fix-It, M/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 10:39:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2809352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atlanticslide/pseuds/atlanticslide
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They fit with the other guys at the house, they fit on the truck, they fit when there's a blaze raging before them, but they don't really fit anywhere else the way they do with each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smoke Gets In Your Eyes Sometimes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [galerian_ash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/galerian_ash/gifts).



Everyone thinks he didn’t make it through the academy the first time around because he got bored, or he flunked out (or both). He’s skipped out on so many careers, it just makes sense that firefighting would be one more on the long list.

What it actually was was the sick feeling in his gut. He hates to admit it was fear, even to himself, but what else could it be, really? It was that clawing, gnawing ache that worked its way up his chest and made him feel eight-years-old again each time he came face-to-face with a building on fire, and how the hell can you be a _firefighter_ if all you can think about anytime you roll up to a job is your dad getting burned alive?

He’s never told anyone that, and he never will. He lets people think what they want.

He’s pretty sure his brother knows, though, despite whatever grief Stephen gives him.

Even on the second go around he still can’t really handle the bodies. He can push it down, that ugly feeling, and do what he’s gotta do, but it sticks with him for a while whenever he sees one, all charred and black and twisted and looking almost like something you’d hang up on Halloween in a haunted house rather than an actual person. 

He never saw his dad, after. He’s spent years wondering, getting glimpses of other people’s charred remains and wondering. _Is that what he looked like? Is that all that was left of him?_

He’s always wondered if Stephen sees it too. They never talk about it.

-

Stephen spends three weeks in the hospital. Two of them are spent hooked up to a ventilator breathing for him. He’s unconscious for the first 35 hours or so, and when he finally opens his eyes he can’t speak and he falls asleep about twenty minutes later, but Brian goes into the bathroom in the hallway and locks himself in a stall and cries with relief, leaning his head against the stall door until he’s got tears and snot running down his chin, trying to breathe.

-

Brian goes back to the 17 after Axe’s funeral, before Stephen’s out of the hospital. He doesn’t really mean to; he means to go back to Arson, back to working with Shadow, but after everything with Axe, Brian’s heart isn’t really in it anymore. Not that his heart was ever really all that into it, other than a brief moment after Tim got burned when Brian was lit up with anger and consumed with finding out who was responsible. That all sort of died out when he found out the man who was like an uncle to him nearly got him killed.

Really, it died out when he remembered the gas cans on the boat and his heart just about stopped beating.

None of it matters now. Axe is dead and Shadow never really needed him - or wanted him - anyway. 

He’s at the firehouse, cleaning out Axe’s locker when a call comes in, and he doesn’t mean to, he’s not there to work, but…

A few days later, Stephen’s sitting up in bed, carefully, while Brian rambles on about firehouse bullshit stuff, just talking to fill up the space while Stephen shoves jello around on his food tray.

“17’s down a few guys,” Brian circles around to eventually, after hitting everything else from the White Sox to the weather to Santos’s adventures with grilling. “Thinking I’m gonna go on a few runs with them.”

Stephen doesn’t say anything. 

Brian swallows heavily and stares at the floor, adds, “Maybe transfer back over there.”

Brian’s not looking at him, but he knows that Stephen is staring him down. There’s a long beat of silence while Brian looks at his shoes and tries to dare himself to toughen up under his brother’s scrutiny. 

“You’re thinking you’re gonna, or you have already?” Steve asks after a moment. Brian shrugs and snags one of the cookies on Steve’s tray, because what does the guy need two desserts for?

He takes his time munching on the cookie before he finally looks up to meet Stephen’s gaze, expecting him to look angry or worried or something. He doesn’t, though - he looks almost calm, the lines that are usually creasing his forehead and around his mouth relaxed in a way that Brian hasn’t seen in a long time. Stephen had stress lines in his forehead by the time he was about 16 years old, that hard look in his eyes was there probably since birth, but he’s not looking tough or angry now; just staring at Brian, expression unreadable. It's a little unnerving

“I am already,” Brian answers. Stephen nods slowly, and then shrugs and offers up this weird sort of smile, like he’s trying to hide something he’s really feeling behind it. Brian’ll take it, though.

-

“You can’t go back to the boat,” Brian tells him for what feels like the nineteenth time. Stephen rolls his eyes but Brian just keeps talking. “There’s no doors on that thing. It’s a piece of shit.”

“Hey,” Stephen starts, but Brian won’t let him get out the inevitable defense. Yeah, okay, it was Dad’s boat. It’s still a piece of shit.

“Summer’s almost over, you gonna spend all winter sleeping on a boat next to a river that has no doors and barely any roof?”

“Worked fine last winter,” Stephen says, and Brian has a lot of trouble believing Stephen actually slept out there all through December and January and the like, rather than taking up a bed at the firehouse for most of the cold months, but he doesn’t follow that thread to the inevitable argument it’ll bring.

“Well, it’s not gonna be good enough this winter, not with…” he trails off and motions with his hand at Stephen’s midsection where there’s a pretty sizeable bandage covering up the no longer gaping hole there. 

Stephen’s pulling on a shirt, gingerly, even more evidence that he can’t go back to living on that shithole of a boat. Maybe he shouldn’t even be leaving the hospital yet.

“Brian,” Stephen sighs, and Brian knows that Stephen loves playing the martyr, that he’ll bitch and moan about it for a while and insist on being by himself, taking care of himself, but for the first time in their lives Brian’s the stronger one, he’s the one who has to look out for his brother, protect his brother, and he’s not going to let Stephen get his way when his way is stupid.

“Stephen, just put your fucking pants on, sign your fucking forms, and get in my fucking truck, okay?” he says, calm as can be, and holds out Stephen’s beat up old Levi’s for him to take.

Stephen glares at him but takes the jeans and Brian goes back to shoving things in the duffle bag he’d brought here last week, busying himself so that he doesn’t have to watch his big brother struggle gingerly out of bed and into his clothes.

-

“You can have the bed,” Brian announces when they get to his place. He expects an argument, expects Stephen to play martyr again.

Instead, Stephen just says, “‘Course I can,” with a dumb grin on his face and smacks Brian lightly on the back of the head before making his way down the hall towards the bedroom. Brian stands there for a moment and blinks before breaking into a small, surprised grin and trailing after him with the duffle bag.

-

Stephen never asks him any questions about the firehouse. Not even about how any of the guys are doing. Not even about Tim.

They come by, of course, the guys. They hovered around the hospital when Stephen was still there and now they hover around Brian’s livingroom every couple of days and tell Stephen about Axe’s funeral and about Swayzak getting busted and about the blaze at some office building downtown and about the dumbshit who tried to grill indoors and about the meth lab that exploded, and Stephen laughs or groans or curses along with every story.

They drink and watch the Sox and occasionally someone asks Stephen when he’s coming back, “House needs our Lieutenant, man,” and Stephen shrugs and avoids answering. He always looks exhausted by the time everyone leaves, and Brian worries that he’s done something to the stitches that still haven’t come out yet.

“I’m fine,” Stephen replies softly when Brian asks him about it one night as he gathers up empty beer bottles.

Brian straightens up and steels for a fight. “Steve,” he pushes.

“I’m alright, Brian,” Stephen replies, still quiet instead of snapping like Brian had expected. He stares back at Brian, that same soft sort of expression that he’d had a few weeks ago back in the hospital that Brian still can’t figure out. He reaches out to grab Brian’s shoulder and grips it tightly for a moment, and Brian has the sudden impulse to do something stupid like hold his hand or something, but he doesn’t.

-

He’s always had dreams about fire - about _the_ fire, usually - but they don’t jolt him awake in a sweat with his heart racing anymore. Usually they’re just kind of normal, almost. It’s him and his dad, up on the rig, weaving through traffic, getting the hose down, taking it on together. It’s a familiar pattern now, after all these years. It’s comforting, even though his dreams often end with Dad getting blown out a window.

A week or two after Stephen gets out of the hospital, Brian wakes up in the middle of the night, confused and muddled and reaching for something, but he doesn’t know what. He looks around the dark living room, occasionally lit up by car headlights shining in through the windows, and listens to Stephen snoring from the bedroom. He spends a while searching his head for fragments of whatever he was dreaming about but eventually falls back asleep.

-

After Dad died, Stephen slept on the floor next to Brian’s bed for weeks. Brian curled up on his side away from him every time Stephen tried to reach out for him, but he could feel Stephen’s presence there at his back like an extra blanket all the time. 

Years later, that constant presence, the protectiveness, is what would drive Brian away.

-

“You don’t have to make dinner, you know,” he tells Stephen as he towels off his hair, still damp from his third shower of the afternoon.

“I know,” Stephen shrugs, awkwardly beating an egg while trying not to pull on his stitches too much. “I want to.” He grins at Brian and it’s not tight or forced or anything - he actually looks kind of happy.

“You’ve been cooking all week, though,” Brian replies. He shoves his hands into his pockets and leans against the doorframe to the kitchen, watches as Stephen spills egg on the counter amid mumbled cursing. “You’re not my wife or something, man, you don’t have to do chores and stuff around the house. I’m not gonna think you’re a freeloader or something if you take some time to heal up.”

“Brian, it’s cool,” Stephen tells him, grinning wider. Brian has no idea what’s so funny - especially when it’s true, Stephen really _should_ be resting up and getting better - but it’s hard not to smile back at him. It’s a good sight.

“I like cooking,” he goes on. “Used to do it for you all the time when we were kids, you remember?”

“I remember you making a lot of spaghetti with meatballs and putting way too much pepper on ‘em.”

“Nah, you can never have too much pepper,” Stephen tells him, waving a hand around. His shirt rides up for just a moment and Brian glances down to catch a glimpse of the bandage still covering Stephen’s wound peeking out from beneath his shirt. 

“I don’t think spaghetti with meatballs is supposed to have _any_ pepper,” Brian says, running a hand through his hair. The damp strands catch on his fingers. 

Stephen watches the movement, eyes darting up to Brian’s hand in his hair and then back down to meet his eyes. “Well, mine does,” he says brightly. 

“Yeah, you know, Stephen,” Brian starts, running his hand over his mouth for a moment before gesturing at the pot of whatever it is that Stephen’s making on the stove. “The thing is… you’re not actually that good a chef.”

“Right,” Stephen snorts, the beginning of laughter, and turns to his pot on the stove to guide the remnants of the egg in. When Brian doesn’t say anything for a moment, he looks back up with a furrowed brow. “Seriously?”

Brian grins sheepishly. “You’ve got some weird sense of taste, man.”

“But you always eat what I cook,” Stephen says, gesturing with the spoon in his hand at nothing. “Always did. I’ve been cooking you dinner all week!”

“It’s been kinda shit,” Brian tells him, trying not to laugh to hard. 

Stephen puts the spoon down and leans back against the counter, rubs at his jaw where a pretty decent beard has been growing in because he wouldn’t let Brian shave him while he was in the hospital or when he first came home and was too weak and tired to ever do it himself. 

“Seriously?” he asks, and Brian shrugs, smiling. 

“I’ve got a couple takeout menus on top of the fridge,” Brian says, patting Stephen briefly on the shoulder as he walks across the kitchen to retrieve the menus. “Lemme order something. You want Chinese or pizza or something?” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Stephen sighs, turning off the burner under the pot and still looking kind of happy, somehow. “Anything’s good.” He turns to look at Brian and flashes a smile, and they both stand there for a moment, weirdly frozen, the menu for that shitty Chinese place down the block dangling from Brian’s fingertips. Brian watches the corners of Stephen’s mouth, the small lines he’s been getting there that come out the most when he smiles.

Stephen shakes it off after a moment - literally shakes his head - and heads out of the kitchen to the livingroom while Brian clenches the menu in his fist. 

It’s the first conversation they’ve had in what feels like years that hasn’t been strained or awkward or ended in a fight, or all of the above. Which is probably something to do with why Brian’s chest feels so full all of a sudden.

-

It’s his turn to do the shopping for the house, half his shift spent wandering up and down the supermarket aisles tossing things into the cart pushed along by the new guy, Jackson, who Brian still doesn’t know that well.

Instead, he leaves the shopping list with Jackson and before he realizes what he’s doing he finds himself in a little bookstore down the street, turning over a hardcover book with the words _Cooking for Beginners_ across the front. 

Stephen’ll probably roll his eyes at being called a “beginner,” but Brian buys it anyway, smiling a little wider than is necessary for normal politeness at the cashier as he pays.

-

Stephen’s sitting in the shitty old chair near the front door when Brian gets home, the one that Brian found on the street a month or two ago and dragged inside because it’s shitty and old and has a little bit of a smell, but it’s still basically functional so it would’ve been stupid to pass it by.

Or, more accurately, Stephen’s passed out in the shitty old chair near the front door when Brian gets home, and for the tiniest fraction of a moment Brian panics and reaches out to feel his skin to reassure himself that he’s fine, he’s totally fine, the doctors wouldn’t have sent him home (weeks ago, now) if he wasn’t healing up, and he’s had three check-ins with his doctor since coming home from the hospital, and he’s fine.

He’s just asleep, slouched down and head slumped forward so that his chin is just about resting on his chest. His chest is rising and falling slowly, calmly - he’s calm, for once, and Brian lets himself run his hand down from Stephen’s neck to rest on his collarbone, then his chest and feel the rise and fall. He can feel Stephen’s heart beating, steadily, softly.

He stays like that, watching Stephen’s eyelids flutter just a bit every so often, until his legs get too tired from the crouched position and he has to get up. He leaves the cookbook next to Stephen’s feet.

-

He runs into Jennifer by chance one afternoon when the 17’s out on a call. Suspected gas leak turned out to be nothing serious, and they’re on their way back to the truck when he spots her across the street.

“Hey, gimme a minute, huh?” he tosses over his shoulder to Schmidt.

“This ain’t a school social, kiddo,” Schmidt calls after him, not really as grumpy as his words might imply.

Brian turns back to him but keeps shuffling awkwardly towards Jennifer, who’s probably spotted him by now. “Five minutes,” he bargains.

“Two,” Schmidt tells him. “Or you’re walking home with your gear.”

Brian holds up his hands, placating, and turns back towards Jennifer, narrowly dodging a car.

“Hi,” she says as gets within easy earshot. 

“Hey. Your, uh… your grandmother isn’t around here, is she?”

She laughs and tucks her hair behind her ear, replies, “No, she’s at home, you’re safe.”

The air suddenly feels heavy and awkward and he almost wishes for a moment that he’d stayed with the rig and pretended he never saw her. Stephen would laugh in his face for that, so Brian straightens up and runs a greasy palm across his hair and asks, “How’re you doing?”

She smiles - still beautifully, always beautifully - and looks away for a moment before nodding and shrugging a bit, and replies, “Yeah, it’s okay. I’m okay. New job already, so…”

“That’s great,” Brian says, unsure of himself or how exactly to respond, what he should say. 

“Yeah, you know, it’s… working for a corrupt politician, pretty much career suicide.” She shrugs again, looking kind of sheepish and can’t meet Brian’s eyes. He’s not sure if it’s the career suicide thing or the working for a guy who covered up the deaths of firefighters thing or if it’s just him being here in front of her.

“But, it’s Chicago, right?” she goes on. “Everyone’s a little corrupt, so I guess people expect it or something. Gotta work my way back up, though. P.A., and then we’ll see, I guess.”

“Who knows,” Brian replies. “You can buck the trend. First Chicago politician who doesn’t get involved in a scandal.”

“Nah, I never really wanted to be a politician myself, I just wanted... wanted to make the city a little better, and god, that sounds really dumb now, huh?” she finishes in a rush. 

“No it doesn’t,” Brian tells her. The rig’s horn blares out suddenly and he turn to flip the guys off.

“Well, anyway,” she goes on, ignoring the rig. “Think I’m done with politics altogether for a while. Maybe I’ll volunteer at a food pantry or something instead.” She grins and he grins back at her, but it’s still not as easy as it once was. Not as easy as a few weeks ago, even if he can still remember just what her skin feels like.

“How’s Stephen?” she asks after a another moment and another loud honk from the rig.

“He’s doin’ alright,” Brian nods. “Still kinda weak, but everything seems like it’s healing up pretty good.”

“When’s he coming back to…” she nods behind him in the direction of the truck.

Brian spends a long moment trying to think of how to reply. “He’s… I don’t know, really. He’s been pretty quiet about that. Pretty quiet in general, actually. He’s still really… I guess I don’t really know where his head’s at right now.”

He hasn’t really talked about this with anyone. The guys have asked about Stephen, Schmidt’s even sat Brian down a couple of times when they’ve all come by the house to check on how Stephen’s doing, “How’s he _really_ doing, Brian, c’mon,” but Brian hasn’t said anything much other than giving updates on the sick scar Stephen’s going to have and how he’s able to walk more and more the past couple of weeks.

It’s easier, for some reason, to say it to Jennifer, though. She gives him a sympathetic look, pursing her lips in that way she does and reaching out to squeeze his shoulder, briefly.

“He probably just needs some time,” she says. “It’s a lot, getting hurt like that, losing a friend.”

“Yeah.” He knows she’s right, and she doesn’t even know the full truth of it all - hurt, almost killed, losing a friend, feeling so betrayed and angry… 

Brian doesn’t want to hate Axe, especially now that he’s dead, not even here for Brian to hate, and Brian gets it, the twisted logic of it and what Axe must’ve been feeling, but… but Tim, and Shadow, and Brian himself.

Stephen nearly died. For a few moments in the back of that ambulance, Brian was sure that was it. And he doesn’t really know how to reconcile that with the guy who was like an uncle to him for so long.

He was no idea what Stephen’s feeling with it all, and suddenly he wants so badly to be near his brother that his chest aches with it. 

“Oh,” Jen interrupts his thoughts, grinner and nodding over Brian’s shoulder again. “Looks like your ride’s leaving without you.”

Brian spins around to see the rig pulling out, Santos waving and grinning brightly back at him from one of the windows.

“Shit,” Brian mutters and turns quickly back to give Jennifer a kiss on the cheek before telling her, “Say hi to your grandma for me,” and tossing her a grin that she returns easily. Spinning around again, he takes off after the truck, unsure when he’ll ever see her again and not as pained about that as he maybe should be.

-

He doesn’t skip out on his shift early, but he wants to, and spends the rest of it staring up at the clock, knees jostling, and only half-paying attention to the Bears game on TV. 

When he finally does get home later, Stephen is there in that same chair near the front door with the cookbook open in his lap.

“Hey," Brian says. Stephen returns the greeting and watches Brian pace awkwardly around for a moment.

“Hey, um. Is there anything…” _You want to talk about_ is what he means to say, but that sounds fucking stupid. 

He drops down to sit on the couch and Stephen closes the cookbook, leans back in his chair to put his feet up on the coffeetable and waits for Brian to go on.

“A lot’s happened lately,” Brian says, clasping his hands in front of him and staring down at them. “We can talk about it, you know. If you want to.”

He looks up to find Stephen giving him the hairiest raised eyebrow.

“Yeah, okay,” Brian says in reply, slapping his knees and rising from the couch. “I’m gonna go get a beer, you want one?”

He doesn’t wait for Stephen to answer and when he returns a moment later with two bottles in hand, he hands one to Stephen and then slouches back on the couch.

“You see that third quarter?” Stephen asks after a quick sip from his bottle. 

“Oh man, that pick was amazing, huh?” Brian replies.

-

He wakes up again in the middle of the night, not sure what exactly woke him, and he never does get back to sleep, too preoccupied with trying to remember his dreams.

-

“You always going to be sitting here when I get home?” he asks Stephen as he walks through the front door and finds Stephen there in that old chair again. 

“Huh?” Stephen glances up from the TV.

“It’s weird, man,” Brian tells him as he drops his bag on the floor and heads to the kitchen to grab a beer, and then another for Stephen. “It’s like you’re a fucking dog or something.”

Stephen shoves Brian lightly when Brian is in arm’s reach and then takes the offered beer and continues flipping through the channels on the TV, all twelve of them because Brian hasn’t gotten around to getting cable yet since he’s been back in Chicago, and it’s like Stephen hasn’t even been watching TV at all, but Brian doesn’t comment on it.

-

There’s a rager in a dry cleaning place on the South Side. Brian’s on nights this week, so it’s late and there’s no civilians there to pull out, but there’s a moment when he’s in there and he loses the line and there’s no one else around him close enough to grab it.

The fire leaps up in front of him, climbing up the walls and reaching out towards him, and he should get down, crouch down and face it with his helmet and jacket instead of his face, but he can’t - it’s like he’s got to see it right there in the face even though he’s seen it a million times before.

He does crouch down after a moment, because he’s not a complete idiot, and crawls over to grab hold of the hose so he can battle it back.

-

It’s been almost seven weeks. It’s starting to get honest-to-god cold, a chill in the air that makes Brian pull the winter clothes out of the back of his closet even though it isn’t quite winter yet.

He finds Stephen standing next to the living room window, staring out at the fading afternoon light.

“Gonna be winter soon,” Stephen says as Brian comes to stand next to him, shoulders jostling lightly. “Gonna start getting dark early. Days real short…”

He trails off. Brian has no idea what he’s talking about.

“Schmidt asked about you again,” Brian says, searching for a thread of conversation. “Asked when you were thinking about coming back, I mean.” 

And maybe that’s what it is, Stephen’s bored, needs to get his purpose back or something.

When Stephen doesn’t answer, though, Brian goes on. “You’re getting better - not all the way back yet, but you could maybe talk to him about timeframe, or doing something at a desk for a while.”

“Think I’m gonna go over to the boat,” Stephen says, turning to finally look at Brian. 

“What?” Brian asks. “Why?”

Stephen shrugs and shoves his hands into his pockets. “Been meaning to get some serious work done on it for a while. Think I could get it sea-worthy by spring. River-worthy, anyway.”

Brian laughs, “You’ve been saying that since we were teenagers, man.”

“I’m serious.” 

“You’ve been saying that even longer.”

Stephen rolls his eyes. “Fuck you.” He’s laughing, a little, and he gives Brian a shove. “You coming with me or not?”

“The sun’s going down soon, how much work you really think you’ll get done out there today?” Brian calls after Stephen as Stephen goes to dig through the closet where Brian dumped all of Stephen’s shit weeks ago after moving it from the boat.

“Weather’s not too bad though. Still kinda warm,” Stephen says even as he pulls on a coat, still being careful with his left side. “We could grill maybe. Sit by the water. That is, if my grilling is up to your high standards.”

And he’s got his coat on, he’s ready to go, and the truth is he hasn’t really been out much since the hospital, since the injury, and Brian’s so used to Stephen being a _firefighter_ , his whole identity wrapped up in his work, that Brian’s not really sure what Stephen even likes to do other than hang around the firehouse with the guys and run into burning buildings, and he may not really be up for much of the latter anymore.

So Brian shrugs one shoulder and says, “Yeah, okay. You got coals for the grill out there?”

-

Stephen pops the cap on his third beer as Brian eyes him carefully.

“You wanna go easy on that, man?” Brian says as Stephen takes a long pull from the bottle. “The doctor said one a day was alright, but - ”

“Jesus, Brian, what’re you, my wife?” Stephen’s got that smile on him, the one that says he’s bordering on angry and steeling for a fight. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and slouches back in his seat, props his feet up on the cooler and turns to watch the water.

Stephen’s never really had a problem with drinking, but he’s never really been a good drunk, either, and his tolerance has got to be shot to shit right now. Brian’s starting to get worried about him and his moods and everything, so he doesn’t say anything, but he’s watching. Closely.

“We should bring Sean out here some night before it gets too cold,” Stephen says absently, swirling the beer around in his bottle and staring out at the river. “Grill up some burgers, look at the stars and shit.”

“Probably wanna clean this place up a little first,” Brian replies, watching Stephen’s hands on the bottle. Stephen’s drumming his fingertips against it and Brian can’t stop watching. 

“Yeah. Maybe it’d be better to wait… wait until we’ve got it fixed up a little more, ready to go out.” He looks up at Brian then, and Brian meets his gaze.

“‘We,’ huh?” he says, trying to lighten the mood a little. They’re staring at each other. “You volunteering me for this hopeless mission to get this piece of junk ready for the water?”

Stephen grins and looks away, shrugging. “You don’t want to share in the glory when it’s finished, that’s fine, man. I can take it out by myself. Me and Sean, sail off down the river and leave your ass here on dry land.”

“You know it’s not a sailboat, right? You’re not going to be sailing anywhere?”

Stephen rolls his eyes. “You know what a figure of speech is, right?”

Brian laughs lightly and takes a sip from his beer, leaning back against the side of the boat where he’s got himself propped up and watching Stephen for a few quiet minutes before he speaks again.

“You haven’t said much about Sean since the hospital.” He watches, waits for Stephen to explode or say something sarcastic or angry. But Stephen just smiles, slow and rueful, at the beer bottle in his hands.

“Helen came to the hospital, few days after I started coming back to it,” Stephen tells him.

“She was there before you woke up too,” Brian tells him. He’s unsure, suddenly, why they haven’t talked about this before.

“Really?” Stephen asks, looking up, and Brian nods. “Huh. I didn’t - she never said anything.”

“Of course she was there,” Brian says. “She was pretty worried.”

“Yeah,” Stephen sighs, leaning back to look up at the darkened sky. “Kinda the problem though, right? It’s too much for her, too much for Sean. It’d probably be easier if she didn’t care so much.”

“Well, that’s stupid.”

Stephen laughs. “I guess.” He’s quiet for a long time. Brian watches him swallow, adam’s apple bobbing a bit as he does.

“She didn’t want Sean seeing me like that,” he says after a while. “In the hospital, all cut up and drugged up and everything.”

“Makes sense.”

“Yeah. I’m not sure she wants him seeing me now, either.”

“But you’re - ” Brian means to say that Stephen’s fine now, but he catches himself because Stephen’s not, really. Still, “He’s your son.”

“I don’t want him going through that. What we went through.”

 _When Dad died goes unspoken._ It always seems to be the unspoken thing hanging around them all the time. Brian wants to ask if that’s why Stephen won’t talk about coming back to the house, about going back into the flames, but he’s not even sure if this is the whole of it. It still feels like there’s a lot going unsaid, but now’s not really the time to push it even so.

“Doesn’t mean you have to stay away from him,” Brian says. “Or that Helen can keep him from you.” And truth be told, he gets it, her fear. He’s felt the same about Stephen, that gnawing worry that someday Stephen would take it too far, would get himself into a fire that he couldn’t get out of and there was never any talking him around on it all so all Brian could ever do was watch him and… and nothing, really. Hoping and praying has never been his style.

“She won’t,” Stephen tells him. He takes a long swig from his bottle, nearly empty now. Brian hopes he won’t try to go for another one. “She’s just scared.”

“Have you guys talked about, uh. You know, a custody arrangement or something?”

Stephen laughs at that, for some reason. It’s an aching sound. “Guess we should start talking about it, huh? _Custody arrangement._ Who’d’ve thought.” 

“And there’s no chance that you two…?” 

“Nah,” Stephen shakes his head. “No, I think it’s over. Really over. We strung it along for a while, but…”

Brian wants to ask more, like why it’s over now when Stephen doesn’t seem like he’s going back to fires anytime soon, but he lets it rest, lets Stephen gaze out at the sky while Brian watches him. 

-

Stephen’s there again, in that stupid chair, when Brian gets home. It’s not even a comfortable chair. Brian’s getting annoyed with it, though he doesn’t really know why. It’s not like Stephen’s really doing anything wrong.

-

Brian has a couple of days off, so they head out to the boat with a couple of hammers and a box of nails and neither one of them really knows what they need to do with it, but banging around on it for a while seems like a good start.

When Brian bangs a hole right through the port side hull, Stephen barks at him to hand over his hammer and Brian spends the rest of the afternoon kicking rocks around and feeling pissed off.

-

Stephen comes home a few days later armed with a couple of books on boats and woodwork repair and he spends the next week reading up on what they actually need to do with the boat before they try to fix (and break) anything again. He doesn’t even yell at Brian for the hole.

-

Stephen’s in there. Brian knows he’s in there, the fire’s got him, but Brian can find him, he’s sure he can, he’s _sure,_ he _has to find him,_ but the fire’s everywhere, and there’s another room, but Brian can see it, lurking in the walls, ready to explode out at him, and he’s got to find his brother....

And Stephen’s calling for him, but not… it’s not urgent or shouting like it should be, his voice sounds calm, close by, Brian can feel breath on his cheek.

And then he’s blinking his eyes open. The fire’s gone, it’s just dark and calm and still all around him except for Stephen leaning over him, touching his cheek and his jaw and his neck.

“You okay?” Stephen asks him, but Brian has no idea if he is. He nods his head anyway.

“Dream,” he struggles out, his heart beating heavily. 

“Yeah, I figured that,” Stephen replies with a sympathetic twist of his mouth, almost a smile. “Bad one?”

“I don’t know,” Brian lies. “I don’t really remember. What’re you doing up?”

“Bathroom,” Stephen replies with a thumb over his shoulder. “Walked by to get some water, you seemed like you were in something, so.”

“Thanks,” Brian says, rolling awkwardly onto his back as best he can on the small space of the couch. He rubs his palms over his eyes and then stares at the dark ceiling for a long time while Stephen sits on the floor next to him.

“Yeah, well,” Stephen says after a while, and Brian suddenly notices that Stephen’s hand has been on Brian’s abdomen this whole time as Stephen pushes himself up to his feet. Brian weirdly misses the contact when Stephen’s hand moves away. “Back to bed everyone.” 

Brian doesn’t answer, but he listens to Stephen move down the hall to the bedroom and for other sounds Stephen makes as he goes back to bed until long after he’s stopped making any.

-

Brian glared at the hull. Stephen glared at him.

“Paint job’ll help,” Stephen told him, bypassing the step ladder to jump down to the ground instead and coming to stand next to Brian. Brian winces at the impact, expecting it to hurt him, but Stephen seems okay. He’s getting stronger all the time.

“Torching it would help,” Brian replies.

“Says the arson investigator.”

“ _Former_ arson investigator,” Brian corrects. They probably shouldn’t be joking about this, all things considered. 

“Yeah, well, it’s not getting lit up either way. We can get it together.” He bumps Brian’s shoulder with his own before slapping him lightly on the back.

Stephen’s been reading up on it and they’ve got some better tools now, and it’s not like hammering in a new shingle on a house or fixing a leaky roof, but they can probably figure it out.

Stephen smiles at him, huge and happy like he hasn’t looked in months - decades, maybe - and climbs back up the ladder, then turns and looks expectantly at Brian until Brian follows after him.

-

“Man, not this album again,” Brian complains when Stephen changes the cassette. Stephen hasn’t even hit play yet, but Brian knows what song it’s going to be.

“You got something against the Stones, Bri?” Stephen asks, his head already bobbing along as the the music starts up.

“You play this album every fucking time we’re out here,” Brian replies, taking a moment to look up from the piece of wood he’s sandpapering. “It’s the ‘90s, man, update your tastes.”

“You never update classics, Brian,” Stephen tells him seriously, pointing a finger at him. Then he joins in with Mick, “ _I saw her today at reception - glass of wine in her hand…_ ”

Brian tries to roll his eyes, but suddenly it’s hard to look away from Stephen - it’s late afternoon and the sun is spilling through cracks in the skyline to fall around them and despite the bit of a chill, Stephen’s got just a t-shirt on and Brian can see where the bandage is gone, can see where he’s healing, and he’s got those lines around his mouth, all relaxed and - 

And then Stephen’s in his face, brushing a hand over Brian’s head to grip his hair and shake Brian’s head around lightly, singing at him, “ _You can’t always get what you waa-aaant!_ ” and Brian laughs and shoves him away.

-

“You been having a lot of dreams like this?

Brian blinks a few times and looks around the room, trying to catch up with himself. Stephen’s leaning over him, one hand on Brian’s neck, a little too close and a little too warm but Brian doesn’t want him to move away so he grips Stephen’s arm tightly and breathes deeply, wills his rapidly beating heart to slow down a little.

“What?” he asks after a moment, still unsure whether it was Stephen or the dream he’d been having that woke him.

“I heard you from the bedroom, Bri,” Stephen tells him softly. “You were shouting. Thought someone’d broken in or something.”

Brian looks around the room, not really focused on anything, and brushes his free hand through his hair. “Did I say anything?”

Stephen shakes his head. “Just shouting.”

Brian exhales heavily and lets go of Stephen’s arm to lay back against the couch cushions, lets Stephen’s hand fall from his neck. “Okay. Sorry, man.”

He throws an arm over his eyes but he knows Stephen hasn’t moved, is still crouched over him, staring him down.

“C’mon, Brian, you really gonna stay out here on the couch?”

Brian sighs, feeling so much more exhausted than he probably should, and then drops his arm to his chest so that he can look up at Stephen.

“What?” he asks. 

Stephen nods towards the bedroom. “You take it.”

Brian scoffs. “You’re still hurt. You shouldn’t roughing it on the couch.”

At any other time in their lives Brian would say the complete opposite, tell Stephen, _fuck you, it’s my bed, you can rough it on the floor if the couch isn’t good enough for you._ But it’s now and they’re here and Stephen’s healing, he’s doing good, he’s looking good, but Brian can’t stop that lingering pang of worry. It might never leave him. He’d thought he was watching his brother die.

But Stephen’s not dead, he’s not dying, he’s standing right here, rolling his eyes in the darkness of Brian’s living room and reaching out to grab Brian by the arm.

“Don’t be an idiot,” he tells Brian before dragging him off the couch. “I’m fine to sleep on a damn sofa.”

Brian’s tired and he goddamn hates letting Stephen have his way about fucking everything, so even as he gets to his feet he tells Stephen, “No, I’m not taking it.”

Stephen stares at him. “This is stupid, Brian.”

“Yeah, so go back to bed already.”

“Not if you’re having trouble sleeping out here.” Stephen’s voice is raising, almost shouting, and they’re going to wake someone up in a moment with this.

“Look, the bed’s pretty big,” Stephen says after a moment of irritated silence.

Brian bristles. “I like to stretch out and I found the frame at Goodwill, fucking sue me.” 

“I mean it’s big enough to share, stupid.” 

“Oh.” Brian blames his just having been woken up for his sluggish mind.

Neither one of them says anything for a few moments, both kind of staring awkwardly at the floor. Stephen’s got his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants, his shoulders a little slumped, and Brian suddenly wishes that Stephen wasn’t wearing a shirt so that Brian could check out how the scar is really doing.

“...So?” Stephen asks finally. “We going back to sleep, or do you wanna just stand here all night?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Brian sighs, brushing past Stephen to head to the bedroom, listening to make sure he hears Stephen’s footsteps following after him.

-

It’s not as uncomfortable sharing a bed with his brother as he’d expected.

-

Stephen’s fingers brush against Brian’s as they trade tools, swapping hammer for screwdriver. Brian has a sudden, fleeting thought that he wants them to linger, and he watches Stephen’s back as he turns away, muscles shifting under Stephen’s t-shirt. 

Brian shakes it away and turns back to the boat.

-

They lose one to a fire in a squat little apartment building, fire started somewhere on the second floor. Twenty-plus people living in the building, way more than there should be, overcrowded and what seems like every apartment piled up with clothes and newspapers and other shit perfect for kindling, so maybe only losing one is lucky. A success, or something like it. 

Brian throws up when he sees the body, blackened and curled up on its side in the corner of a rear-facing room. Used to be a man, but he only knows that because they knew they were looking for a man. It’s nothing but blackened skin and charred bones now. Brian takes one look and he’s hit with that smell, the one that’s different than the normal building fire stench, and turns around, pukes in the corner of the next room over. None of the guys say anything about it. 

For once he’s relieved when he finds Stephen sitting in that chair by the door when he gets home. Stephen doesn’t say anything, just puts his book down and looks up at him, reaches up to hold onto Brian’s arm and brush his thumb back and forth over Brian’s skin.

“Bad day?” he asks after a moment, and Brian can’t answer, suddenly gripped with it, crawling up his throat, something like horror. He nods and can’t speak and he turns towards the bathroom to go take a shower even though he’s already showered twice since that call.

When he gets out, after thoroughly scrubbing himself down, there’s a pizza and a sixpack waiting for him on the coffee table in the living room. Stephen hands him a beer and turns on a basketball game and they watch in silence, passing beers and slices back and forth for the rest of the night.

-

Sharing a bed with his brother is actually pretty comfortable. Stephen’s, deep, even breathing lulls him, soothes him, even when Stephen starts to snore, and somehow Brian really does sleep a little easier when Stephen is there next to him, warm and living and breathing.

One morning when he wakes up, Brian finds Stephen’s hand wrapped around Brian’s wrist. Stephen sleeps on and Brian lets him.

-

“I’m gonna go see Tim on Thursday,” Brian announces, watching Stephen carefully as Stephen hammers a nail into a new shingle on the boat’s roof.

Stephen grunts in response and doesn’t look up from his work.

Brian won’t let that deter him.

“He just moved into a new unit. Not as intensive - you know, since he’s doing a lot better. Might even get to go home by Christmas.”

Stephen’s hammering gets louder. Brian feels a sudden burst of fury swell up in him.

“‘Course you _wouldn’t_ know, would you, because you haven’t been to see him since that first night.”

Stephen keeps hammering. The banging is starting to sound angry.

“You never even ask about how he’s doing,” Brian goes on, pissed now that Stephen won’t even fucking look at him.

“I got it, Brian,” Stephen replies, still not looking up, still hammering.

Brian takes two quick strides over to stand just below where Stephen is perched and grabs the hammer out of Stephen’s hand. Stephen glares down at him.

“I don’t think you do have it.” Brian’s voice is low, seething. He wishes he could get up into Stephen’s face and thinks about grabbing Stephen’s wrist and dragging him down. Fucking coward.

“Tim has been in that hospital, in that fucking burn center. He looked up to you and he’s been in there for months and you haven’t been there!”

“I know!” Stephen spits back at him. He jumps down, finally, and gets right into Brian’s face, eyes wide and fierce. “You really think I’m not thinking about that, thinking about him every fucking day?”

“So why aren’t you doing anything about it?” Brian shouts back. They’re nose-to-nose but nearly screaming and Brian pokes a finger into Stephen’s chest. “You’re still out here on this fucking boat, or holed up in the apartment, sitting by the door like you’re waiting for something, why don’t you get off your fucking ass and go do something, go see Tim or call him or the other guys at the house, huh?”

“I am doing something!” Stephen slaps Brian’s hand away angrily.

“You’re dicking around on a boat that’s been sitting in this same spot for a decade.”

Stephen shoves him away. “Fuck off.”

“No!” Brian pushes him back, but stays up close to glare into Stephen’s eyes. “You won’t go near the house. You won’t even fucking ask about how Tim’s doing. The other guys ask about you, about when you’re coming back, what the hell do I tell them, Steve, huh? ‘Sorry, he doesn’t want to be a firefighter anymore, he’s too busy hammering nails into an old boat, fuck you all’? What, do you not care anymore?”

Stephen grabs Brian by the shirt, balls his hands into fists in the material and drags Brian up close, but Brian just holds onto Stephen’s wrists and glares right back at him, unwilling to be intimidated.

“You really think that?” Stephen asks him, growling it out in a low voice. “I spent my whole life on the job. It _was_ my whole life, and those guys are… you really think I don’t give a shit about any of ‘em? You think that little of me, Brian?”

 _Of course not_ is the answer, but Brian can’t say it right now. 

“Then what?” is what he does say. Stephen is breathing hard, open mouthed. Warm air hits Brian’s eyelids on every exhale. “You don’t want to do the job anymore, I get it, but that doesn’t mean you have to cut them all out.”

Stephen releases him then, shoves him away and turns his back on Brian, running and hand through his hair angrily. 

“Don’t walk away,” Brian tells him, following so that he can grab Stephen’s arm and spin him back around. “You always fucking walk away!” 

“I’m not!” Stephen shouts, knocking Brian’s hand away. “I’m not walking away, goddammit. I’m…”

Brian tries to give him a moment to collect himself, to finish his sentence, but Stephen seems stalled out.

“Stephen…”

“I can’t,” Stephen says, dropping his head to glare at the floor of the boat. His words are low, gone of all the anger of just a minute ago. “I don’t think I can do it anymore.”

“What? The job?”

Stephen doesn’t reply.

“But - but you don’t have to.”

Stephen shakes his head, runs one hand through his hair again to let it settle on the back of his neck. He’s quiet for a long time before he says, sounding calm and quiet now, “You think junkies, alcoholics, you think they ever really get over it after they get clean?”

Brian’s thrown enough that he doesn’t answer, and Stephen looks up to meet his eye again, keeps talking.

“I’ve been thinking about that. An alcoholic who's been dry for a decade is still an alcoholic. It’s always there. A junkie who gets clean and sober, doesn’t touch the stuff for years, the addiction's still there, right? Probably always there, lurking, waiting for that one moment they slip up. You think it can happen like that, you’re sober for years, you’ve got it beat, and then one day you just… you just fall?”

Brian’s got no idea where this is going or what this has to do with what they’re talking about. “Yeah? Maybe. I don’t really know.”

He watches Stephen watch him.

“I don’t know if I can go back there,” Stephen tells him. “I think it’s - I keep thinking that if I go back, I’ll never get out. I go back to the house, I hang out there with the guys… I go see Tim… just once, I go back, and that’s it. I’ll just go right back to it. And I don’t think I want it anymore. The job.”

“You don’t have to stay, get trapped it in or something,” Brian tells him. Stephen’s talking about firefighting like it’s a life sentence rather than a job. But maybe that’s how Stephen’s always seen it.

“I don’t know how to be anything else,” Stephen replies. Brian can see his hands shaking and he suddenly wants to grab them and hold on, angry as he was just a few minutes ago. “Anyone else but a firefighter. I don’t know how to be a husband, I barely even know how to be a dad.”

“Stephen,” Brian starts, wants to reassure him that he’s a great dad, but Stephen keeps talking.

“It’s all mixed up in my head, you know?” Stephen says, gesturing upwards, and now Brian does touch him, takes his forearm and holds on, kind of awkward, but Stephen’s skin is clammy and it’s getting chilly and Brian wants to hug him.

“It’s not that I hated doing it, I just - it was my whole life and it almost killed me, and I can’t keep seeing guys, Tim, getting hurt around me, I can’t keep going in, but I can’t do anything else either.”

Brian does hug him then, unsure what else to do or to say, and Stephen doesn’t fight him on it, just folds into Brian’s arms and lets his forehead rest on Brian’s shoulder as Brian wraps his arms around Stephen’s shoulders and his waist and they stand for a long time entwined like that.

“You could try selling cabins,” Brian says softly into Stephen’s ear after a few minutes. Stephen laughs, surprised, and pushes Brian away gently, scrubbing a hand over his face.

“I’m serious,” Brian tells him, grinning. “I could show you the ropes, probie. It’s not too hard, even you could get the hang of it.” 

“Yeah, you think?” 

Brian shrugs. “Eventually, sure. Anything’s possible.”

-

It’s November, but they’re playing basketball in the shipyard and getting a little competitive about it, so it’s getting a little sweaty even after they strip down from sweatshirts to t-shirts.

Stephen elbows Brian in the chest to get past him to the basket and Brian calls out, “Hey man, that’s a foul!” 

“Didn’t look like it to me!” Stephen calls back as he shoots his basket, whooping and pumping his fist when it swooshes in. “I think that’s 16-9, isn’t it?”

“‘Cause you’re a damn cheater, sure,” Brian replies, trying not to laugh at him and taking the ball when Stephen bounces it to him. He dribbles for a moment and watches the way Stephen’s t-shirt is sticking to his collarbone, damp with sweat.

“Quit whining and shoot the ball,” Stephen tells him, wiping a trickle of sweat from the side of his face. 

Brian dribbles the ball from hand to hand and watches Stephen’s eyes dart down, like he’s looking at Brian’s neck, and that’s when Brian makes his move, faking to the right and going left, but Stephen spins on him, swipes the ball away and heads for the basket.

He makes a noise when he stretches up and jumps to shoot, shocked and uncomfortable, and grabs his side when he comes down. 

“Stephen!” Brian shouts before he realizes he’s doing it, and dashes over.

“It’s fine,” Stephen waves him off, looking down at his left side. “Skin’s just still kind of tight there.”

Brian reaches over to lift Stephen’s t-shirt up, lays his fingertips on the skin of Stephen’s abdomen around the scar. “Lemme look at - ”

Stephen slaps his hand away and backs off like he’s been burned. “I said it’s fine, Brian.” He goes to retrieve the ball, walking a little awkwardly. “We playing, or what?”

Brian stands there for a moment, watching him, uncertainty wandering through his mind, before he comes back over to take the ball.

-  


There was once when they were kids - Brian more of one, just barely fourteen, Stephen older and thinking of himself like a grownup despite himself - when Brian looked at Stephen and there was something different there, something in the air around them. He never could put his finger on it.

They were out at the park, kicked out for the afternoon by their grandfather’s poker game. Stephen was talking about the entrance exam, telling Brian about how fire breathes, how it needs oxygen, that’s why you have to know just when you break a window or open a door, and Brian was laid back in the grass, staring up at him as Stephen paced around and gestured through the air with every word, excitement building.

Brian was barely listening to the actual words, just watching Stephen’s hands, watching his mouth, and Brian got this sudden flush of affection that warmed his stomach and flooded up through his chest.

And then Stephen flopped down on the grass next to him, still talking, still gesturing through the air, his shoulder jostling with Brian’s, and it changed - suddenly it was something different, something brand new in Brian’s chest that he couldn’t identify.

“You and me, Bri,” Stephen had said, turning his head so that he could look at Brian. “It’s gonna be you and me out there soon. The McCaffrey brothers, out there taking over the family business, staring down the flames together.” He elbowed Brian lightly. “You think you’re up for it?”

Brain stared at him and nodded, of course he’d be up for it, of course he could do it with Stephen there next to him. 

Stephen smiled back at him and Brian felt taken over by it, wanting to be close to Stephen, even closer than laying side-by-side with him.

He didn’t give it much thought over the following years.

-

“Shit, man,” Brian says when he gets home, and there Stephen is again, like always. It’s been a long shift, two serious runs and three false alarms, and Brian had thought maybe they were getting somewhere with their fight on the boat. “Why the hell are you always here?”

“I live here,” Stephen answers calmly, like he doesn’t know what Brian’s talking about. “Unless this is you kicking me out.”

Brian rolls his eyes. “ _Here_ , in this stupid chair, it’s not even comfortable, why are you always right here when I get home?”

“Jesus, Bri, what’s the big deal?” 

“It’s fucking annoying! I mean - I mean, christ, Stephen, I’m a good firefighter!”

Stephen’s head cocks back, a confused furrow to his brow. “What’re you - ”

“I know what this is all about,” Brian cuts him off. “And I’m getting really damn tired of it. I am good at what I do.” He punctuates his words with his finger pointing angrily at Stephen.

“I know that,” Stephen replies calmly, standing up to walk over and switch off the TV.

That throws Brian a little. “What… seriously?” He takes a step back and puts his hands on his hips, still getting ready for a fight.

“I know you’re good,” Stephen repeats. His hands are in his pockets, that same awkward stance he gets when he doesn’t really want to be having the conversation he’s having. “You think I never saw you out there?” 

Brian shakes his head, confused. “But you never - you were harder on me than anyone. You didn’t trust me to go in alone.”

“When you were five minutes out of the Academy?” Stephen laughs at him. “‘Course I didn’t trust you to go in alone. But you - you’re not five minutes out of it anymore, are you?”

Brian doesn’t answer that, can’t think of anything to say at all. Stephen looks away from him.

“I saw you out there, Brian,” Stephen continues, staring at the floor for a moment before looking back up to meet Brian’s eye. “That night, the warehouse. I saw you with it. You took it on and beat it back. You saved my life.”

“I didn’t - ” Brian starts, because no, the other guys got in there, they got to Steven.

“You saved my life. I knew it then.” He takes his hands out of his pockets, gesturing up at his eyes like he needs Brian to get it. “I could _see_ it. You can handle it. You can be one of the best.”

But Brian shakes his head again. “Then why don’t you trust me?”

“What do you mean?”

Brian waves a hand at the chair. “You sit here and wait for me to come home and… and worry like some fucking war wife or something and I can see it, every time I get home, every time I walk through the door, it’s like you didn’t expect me to come back. You don’t trust me, trust that I can handle myself and take care of my guys.”

“That’s not - ”

“Don’t say that’s not it, because I can see it, Steve, even right now, you’re talking and telling me how great at it you think I am, but you’re scared!”

Stephen’s hands ball up into fists for a moment and then release. “Of course I’m fucking scared, Brian, you’re my brother!”

“If you say you trust me, you say you know I can handle myself, why can’t you just. Just let me go!” He’s said it so many times to Stephen over the years, but Stephen has never really gotten it. He’s never let Brian go completely. 

“You’re such a fucking idiot sometimes, you know that?” Stephen tells him, and Brian rolls his eyes in response. “You really think I’m never going to worry about you, never going to wonder if you’ll actually make it out every time you go in? You’re not the only one with a fucking sob story from that day, you know!”

Brian knows that day Stephen’s talking about. He’s never heard _this_ before, though.

“He was one of the best,” Stephen goes on. “I trusted him, to take care of himself, take care of the other guys, you. And then one day, you guys go out there, and... and he just never comes back.”

Brian fees a little sick, his stomach twisting up sharply.

“So yeah, fine, I fucking admit it, I get a little jumpy about you being out there, going into it when I can’t - when I can’t be with you. Can’t see you and make sure. And you know, I fucking hate myself for it, leaving you out there on your own, but - but I can’t - ”

“Then trust them,” Brian says. He wants to touch Stephen, so fuck it, he does - reaches out to run his hand across Stephen’s hair and down the back of his neck and that’s probably weird, but he doesn’t care. “Trust me to take care of myself, trust the guys to have my back.”

Stephen rests one hand on Brian’s outstretched arm and doesn’t say anything more. 

-

Brian dreams that night. It’s the apartment, their apartment, and they’re caught with the fire around them and Brian knows that Stephen is nearby, he can almost see Stephen’s hands, but he’s just out of reach and Brian can’t get across the floor fast enough and then he’s outside suddenly and the window explodes with fire - he startles awake, with his heart racing and Stephen’s hand on his chest, his breath in Brian’s ear.

“It’s okay, Bri,” he says, softly, as Brian breathes deeply, huge lungfuls of smoke-free air. “You’re okay. Everything’s alright.” 

“I’m sorry,” Brian says after a moment, when his breathing is a little more back to normal. He lays back and stares up at the ceiling, feeling Stephen shift around and lay back beside him, glances over to see Stephen watching him.

“It’s okay. You get nightmares like that a lot?”

“Wasn’t a nightmare, exactly,” Brian tells him, even though he supposes that it qualifies.

Stephen snorts at that. “Sure seemed like it.”

Brian shrugs as best he can against the bed. “It wasn’t, it was more… I don’t know. Yeah, I get ‘em a lot. They’re not really so bad, most of the time.” 

“Not so bad?” 

Brian looks over to see Stephen’s eyebrows raised, half-smile on his face.

“Yeah, it’s - I can’t explain it. It’s like, being close to Dad or something. I’m back there, that day and he’s there. Most of the time, anyway.” His throat feels scratchy and worn out, like maybe he really was just in the midst of a fire a moment ago.

Stephen laughs hollowly. “That’s weird, man.” 

“I know.” Brian smiles despite himself. 

Stephen grows serious and runs his hand down Brian’s arm. “I remember when we were kids, right after it happened, you woke up a lot in the middle of the night.”

“I don’t really remember,” Brian tells him, and he doesn’t. He thinks again about Stephen sleeping on the floor next to Brian’s bed.

“Lately it’s - it’s you in there too,” Brian says, soft enough that he’s not sure Stephen will here, and not sure he wants Stephen to. 

But he does hear, of course, and he squeezes Brian’s arm, moves his hand down to rest on Brian’s hand, and Brian twines their fingers together impulsively. 

“I wish it’d been me with him that day,” Stephen says, just as softly. “I wish like hell it hadn’t been you, that you didn’t have to see that.

“Well, c’mon, man,” Brian says, rueful and aiming to lighten up the air around them that feels thick with tension and something else, too thick to really breathe right. “It was my turn, you know it was.”

“Right,” Stephen says, smiling kind of sadly. 

They lie there quietly for a while, hands still clasped together, staring at one another, and Brian’s heart is still beating fast, more rapid a pace than when he first woke up a few minutes ago, knowing that something is changing here but unsure what, exactly. 

“I do trust you, you know,” Stephen tells him, still in that quiet voice. He squeezes his fingers around Brian’s. He rolls over so that he’s on his side, his face inches from Brian’s. “But you want me to stop worrying about you, I’m never gonna do that. I can’t.”

Brian watches him for a while, stares at Stephen’s eyes until he can’t really see them anymore, they don’t even look real, and he nods and says, “Okay,” and with all the impulse of a man running into the flames, he presses forward.

Stephen meets him halfway and they're kissing before Brian can even process that this is what he’s after, what he’s _been_ after for however long now. Stephen’s hands move up through Brian’s hair and his tongue licks across Brian’s lips and Brian slings one leg over Stephen’s hips and brushes a hand down and then up under Stephen’s t-shirt so that he can feel the scar.

Stephen pulls away to whisper Brian’s name and Brian smiles wildly back at him before biting a kiss into Stephen’s neck and working his way back up to press their mouths together again. Stephen runs his hands down to Brian’s back, fingertips digging into the skin there, as Brian keeps running his thumb over and over the scar, can’t stop touching there.

He forces his hand away long enough to get Stephen’s t-shirt off and then his own, and moves down so that he can press his face against Stephen’s chest, lick across his abs and then press his mouth against the scar, tongue swirling an outline around where he watched Stephen nearly bleed to death from a few months ago. The skin is hot, sweaty, jumping a little as Stephen twitches and moans and presses up against Brian, and he’s alive and Brian doesn’t ever want to stop touching him.

They get their pants off, somehow, and Brian tells Stephen, “Jack me off,” because he’s got no fear right now and Stephen wants this too, so Stephen does it, wrapping his hand around Brian’s dick and rubbing him slow and so good. Brian’s breath comes stuttering out as Stephen rolls them over and strokes Brian’s cock harder, faster now, pressing his own into Brian’s thigh and rubbing up against him.

“Stephen,” Brian breathes out, and Stephen looks at him, smiling brilliantly.

“Yeah, Bri,” he says, and leans down to kiss Brian again as Brian comes, biting at Stephen’s bottom lip and letting out a shout. 

He gets himself together enough to get a hand on Stephen’s dick and keeps their mouths pressed together, his tongue pressed against Stephen’s, as he jacks him, his fist tight and slick with sweat and Stephen’s precome as Stephen groans into him.

“Yeah, Steve, come on,” he tells Stephen, and watches as Stephen clenches his eyes shut, almost like he’s in pain, an expression unlike any he’s ever seen his brother make before, and comes all over Brian’s hand and his thigh.

-

They’re quiet for a long time, after. They don’t move away from one another, though, and Brian doesn’t feel scared or ashamed or anything that he thinks he really should be feeling. It’s just calm and quiet and Stephen’s arms are comfortable around him. He wonders if Stephen is panicking at all.

“No one can know about this,” Stephen says after a while, and Brian has to shuffle a bit to be able to actually look at Stephen lying next to him. He looks pretty blissed out, not like he’s worried or upset or anything. “Sean can’t ever find out.”

“You really think I’m an idiot, don’t you?” Brian says, without any heat, and waits for Stephen to meet his eyes. “Does that mean you… you want to…” He’s not really sure how to finish the sentence. _Do that again? Have a relationship or something? An affair? Move across the country and pretend I don’t exist?_

Stephen answers him by leaning forward and kissing Brian slowly, tongue brushing against Brian’s upper lip as he pulls back. He doesn’t ask if Brian’s sure, like he knows - he trusts that Brian would stop him if he wasn’t.

And maybe Brian can get used to that, _I’m never going to stop worrying about you,_ and Stephen never being able to fully let Brian go. Brian knows he’ll never stop dreaming about Dad, and he’ll never stop loving Stephen. And this is all probably fucked up, but it’s okay. They’re okay like this, together. They fit now, somehow, in a way that they haven’t in years. They fit now.

Brian’s scared of the fire and Stephen’s scared of losing Brian, but the McCaffrey brothers will just stare it all down together and have each other’s backs and keep on going.


End file.
